That girl's face above is kind of what mine is looking like reading through this thread...

Having been part of the initial thread a couple of years ago that started this whole PAE for puppy thing, I have done some testing, research and have some experience and observations regarding PAE.

Firstly, despite Q5sys's assertions from what he has read, in my actual user experience, PAE does not have a 5% reduction in performance. Running through hardinfo tests (which aren't exactly definitive) the differences were more along the lines of 0.1%. Hardly enough to care about.

I have tested PAE on at least 6 PCs. It worked on 5. It didn't play nicely with my eeePC with an Atom processor. These things are / were really popular, and Puppy and puppy derivatives are often touted as being great for them. Think Jemimah's puppeee. Very popular computer that puppy won't boot on? Not cool. PAE works on my Celeron 600 something or other, AMD quad core, Pentium 4 something, AMD dual cores etc. For a PC that supports it, there is a theoretical difference, but it is not noticeable.

On my current main system, the Quad core AMD, I run Saluki. Initially I had 4gig of ram, running non PAE, so seeing about 3.2 and no swap. It's puppy after all, who needs all that ram. This was all well and good until I started using virtualbox to run windows whilst multitasking with other stuff, probably firefox and facebook. I ran out of ram, so bought 4 more gig, and changed to the PAE kernel for Saluki. On this PC with it's larger access to RAM provided by PAE, my stability and usability has increased. Virtualbox runs exactly the same as before, without the crashes. No recompilation required. And I can allocate 4gig of ram to windows in virtualbox, which it does need, coz its windows. I did have to compile the driver for nvidia as it didn't work with the PAE kernel. No problems there though.

This alludes to what I said in my previous post, and I think Atle highlighted it as well. When it comes to PAE, its best to know what you're doing and making an informed choice. For the girl in the story and pic who doesn't know what PAE even is, why bother? For the Puppy audience rejuvenating an old PC with less than 4gig of RAM, why bother? For the newer PC with more than 4gig of RAM, its awesome. For the newer PC with more than 4gig of RAM, 64bit should be awesomer.

In other threads dealing with this topic, I have said 64bit is the future, but, in the limited puppyland, 64bit is a tiny portion, with limited developers and limited support. PAE is a great intermediate step, to be able to use many of the 32bit PETs we have, without having to recompile or redesign for 64bit. The best thing for Puppy's future on the Modern desktop is to help Jamesbond et al working on 64bit to get past 32bit of all flavours.

My Dell Inspiron 6000 has the same specs as your 2GB laptop. I have never experienced any issuesi using PAE on its 1.5Mhz Pentium M. This is an old laptop. My Hardindo works well.

I am not trying to take a position to suggest what you should/shouldn't use. But, I just reference this as you may be having some RAM chip problems or there is some other hardware problems which is causing that laptop to not be completing a Hardinfo task.

Further for that laptop, I have and continue to run PAE for the services it provides and to assist in testing when developers are prepping their distros.

As said, it is hoped that this experience with PUPs gives insights about your hardware and what can and cannot be used.

But, I still believe that developers make choices and try to address and benefit the largest possible population with the widest possible peripheral degrees, here in Puppyland.

I get no greater satisfaction to try to support them as best I can same as the many other members of this community, with the limited skils I possess.

Hope this experience and dialogue has been helpful to all participants, even in some small way.

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Think your spot on there. People deserve to be given a more informed choice, rather than loosing and disappointing a unknown percentage of new users that will probably loose faith if its not booting the first time.

My perspective of this is purely a "marketing" perspective.

One can only guess how many people came to our car shop and the car in the shop did not start. Do you start to make request to the salesman then or do you go over to the next shop with a different brand(could be slitaz, tiny core or lubuntu etc)

One can never ever change the first impression of anything. Its holy ground and I honestly feel we are messing with that ground, not matter if its 50% or 5% percent of the first time puppy users that gets the clear message(boot failure), instead of seeing the desktop arrive at a amazing speed and get hooked on puppy and become a citizen of puppyland.

And non-PAE will perform on all platforms. But be aware of its limitation.

What limitation? Unless you have 4gb ram or greater, there is no limitation. And for those that do, they are most likely running a 64bit processor, so would better be served by a 64bit release. Making a 32bit OS run better for 64bit processors at the cost of negatively impacting older 32bit users is kinda silly in my mind.

p310don wrote:

Having been part of the initial thread a couple of years ago that started this whole PAE for puppy thing, I have done some testing, research and have some experience and observations regarding PAE.

Firstly, despite Q5sys's assertions from what he has read, in my actual user experience, PAE does not have a 5% reduction in performance. Running through hardinfo tests (which aren't exactly definitive) the differences were more along the lines of 0.1%. Hardly enough to care about.

I have tested PAE on at least 6 PCs. It worked on 5. It didn't play nicely with my eeePC with an Atom processor. These things are / were really popular, and Puppy and puppy derivatives are often touted as being great for them. Think Jemimah's puppeee. Very popular computer that puppy won't boot on? Not cool. PAE works on my Celeron 600 something or other, AMD quad core, Pentium 4 something, AMD dual cores etc. For a PC that supports it, there is a theoretical difference, but it is not noticeable.

I was curious as to the results everyone here is speaking about. I would be interested in seeing the 'results' that people are basing their opinions on. Because the only results I have seen before show that PAE isnt quite as fast as non-PAE.
So i decided to spend some free time today (which I happen to have) and compare the newest Slacko 5.4 on 4 machines. I burned the PAE and the non-PAE ISOs, and booted them.
Each computer was tested the same way. Boot the system from the CD, load the OS into ram, and run Hard-info. Nothing else was done or changed. Here is the link to the full report, but I'll quote the results here. Anyone interested can go to that link for the graphic results and the hard-info reports. In my mind a result of less than 1% is negligible.

Q5sys wrote:

On Modern Hardware the difference is minimal, aside from a very interesting result on a a quad core i5 with 16gb ram. This system was fully able to utilize the benefits of PAE, however did so with an unexpected side effect. Obviously on an modern system with more than 4Gb ram, a user should be using a 64bit release.

The worst result as I expected was on older hardware, where ram is minimal and is precious. The system had enough ram to boot and as such the ISO loaded into ram. The extra memory used for PAE, which is required, impacts older minimal hardware more than modern hardware. On older hardware running PAE is a severe drain of precious resources, and as such should NOT be encouraged.

Overall the results are mixed. On Modern hardware PAE is slower than non-PAE in some tasks but not others. However on older hardware it was slower across the board, and on older hardware a 2% performance decrease is much more noticeable in the user experience than on a modern system.

Acer Aspire One D257 Netbook
Total RAM on PAE is 1% less than non-PAE
Free RAM on PAE is 1% less than non-PAE
Benchmarks -
Blowfish - PAE is <1% slower than non-PAE
CryptoHash - PAE is 2% faster than non-PAE
Fibonacci - PAE is <1% slower than non-PAE
N-Queens - PAE is 2% faster than non-PAE
FFT - PAE is 1% slower than non-PAE
Raytracing - PAE is 2% faster than non-PAE

Lenovo Y510 with 4gb ram
Total RAM on PAE is 1% less than non-PAE
Free RAM on PAE is 3% less than non-PAE
Benchmarks -
Blowfish - PAE is 1% faster than non-PAE
CryptoHash - PAE is 1% slower than non-PAE
Fibonacci - PAE is 7% faster than non-PAE
N-Queens - PAE is <1% slower than non-PAE
FFT - crashes hard-info - so no results
Raytracing - crashes hard-info when run - so no results

Custom Built Intel i5 system with 16gb ram
Total RAM on PAE is 530% greater than non-PAE (what we would expect)
Free RAM on PAE is 603% greater than non-PAE (what we would expect)
Used RAM on PAE is 1% higher than non-PAE (what we would expect due to how PAE works)
Benchmarks -
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: PAE system @ 2800Mhz compared to non-PAE running @ 1200Mhz
Blowfish - PAE is <1% faster than non-PAE
Cryptohash - PAE is 9% slower than non-PAE
Fibonacci - PAE is <1% slower than non-PAE
N-Queens - PAE is <1% slower than non-PAE
FFT - PAE is <1% faster than non-PAE
Raytracing - PAE is <1% faster than non-PAE
This is not what I expected. On this sytem I expected PAE to be much faster than non-PAE. The fact that PAE is only marginally faster than non-PAE when run at 233% processor speed is very suprising to me. Moreso considering that when Cryptohash on PAE was running the CPU at 2800Mhz it was 9% slower than the non-PAE running Cryptohash with CPU at 1200Mhz.
(I preformed this test 3 more times and got the same results, so its not a random result)

p310don wrote:

In other threads dealing with this topic, I have said 64bit is the future, but, in the limited puppyland, 64bit is a tiny portion, with limited developers and limited support. PAE is a great intermediate step, to be able to use many of the 32bit PETs we have, without having to recompile or redesign for 64bit. The best thing for Puppy's future on the Modern desktop is to help Jamesbond et al working on 64bit to get past 32bit of all flavours.

I agree with you on this, I think our focus should be on 64bit for modern hardware, and 32bit for older hardware. My Lenovo Y510 that I used in that test was made in 2008 and has a 64bit processor. Pretty much any system that can run more than 4Gb ram has a 64bit processor on it. Motherboard Companies arent stupid, they arent going to rely on a software patch they have no control over to make their boards usable by the majority of the market.

Hello,
@Q5sys,
I am curious.. Do you see any difference in swap utilization in pae vs non pae kernels.. ?_________________Close the Windows, and open your eyes, to a whole new world
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Hello,
@Q5sys,
I am curious.. Do you see any difference in swap utilization in pae vs non pae kernels.. ?

I was booting the system from the CDs only. I did not go into any configuration of Swap usage. None of my systems have swap partitions on any of the drives.
I prefer to run completely from ram... so swap is kinda pointless for me... If I wanted to run from a disk, I wouldn't be using puppy. lol

Q5sys, what would you like us to say so that you would be satisfied. Nothing that has been published is inaccurate, yet you seem to have another idea that would better express things.

I do think what your test show is good as you are showing that PAE does work. And you do this showing that PAE boots without any severe issues. This is good for those who would want to try PAE after reading this thread. Many of us use swap as matter of course. Not that it would matter for your tests. And, many of the PAE testors shared POSITIVE observations they had in using their desktops for normal daily workloads.

I believe that the developers who did their own testing found benefit, as well, in both observation and behavior. Thus PAE, on 32bit PUPs (as of today we have a PAE report of a PUP booting and running on a 256MB RAM PC.) does bring benefit as an OS that one does not have to make changes to as one uses or adds more and more RAM. Thusly, what you have taken time to show us that PAE runs on just about everything that is capable of supporting it.

Nothing is being shoved down the throats of the community. And, many of the distro developers make statements about the PCs that PAE is directed toward.

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Q5sys, what would you like us to say so that you would be satisfied. Nothing that has been published is inaccurate, yet you seem to have another idea that would better express things.

I do thnik what your test show is good as you are showing that PAE does work. Many of us use swap as matter of course. Not that it would matter for your tests. And, many of the testors shared observations they had in using their desktops for normal daily workloads.

So what would you say to this community?

Gcmartin,
I realize that you get quite passionate about certain things on this forum. But sometimes you push an idea so hard that you refuse to consider even the slightest concept that you might not have your facts 100% accurate. I'm not saying you're completely wrong. I'm saying you're 95% right. I think however that 5% can be addressed, so that you can go and promote whatever issue as accurately as possible. I hate the term constructive criticism... but it kinda fits.

I am not arguing against Puppy have a PAE kernel available. I'm simply postulating that it should not be default. The main reason being that since Puppy is 'currently' focused on reviving older hardware and PAE has a substantial impact on older hardware, I dont think its the best idea for a default ISO.
Now if you would prefer that the focus of Puppy Linux be on modern hardware, then go have a talk with Barry. I cant read Barry's mind, but until I see a post by him saying he's not focusing on older hardware... I'm going to consider that older hardware is still the Mission Barry has for Puppy, and thus its official releases.

You have claimed that there are 'no performance issues' at all. This simply isn't true. On Semi-Modern Hardware there are no performance issues. I'm still unsure of why the modern hardware results turned out the way it did... and I'm interested so I'm going to keep testing. But PAE does have a negative impact on older hardware... which is the exact hardware that Puppy Linux is focused on.

You love promoting, and thats fine... all I'd ask is that you passionately promote the following:

1) PAE works great on modern hardware thats not 64bit.
2) PAE works fine on Modern Hardware, but a user would be better served by a 64bit release.
3) PAE is incompatible with certain processors
4) PAE works on 'most' older hardware, but brings with it a performance penalty. On a P3 system like the one I have and tested on, PAE offers NO added functionality, and had a massive performance penalty.

You have promoted points 1, 2, and when you became aware of point 3, you promoted that as well. You have outright refused to even consider point 4, which I showed through testing. You repeat over and over that there is no performance issue.

You have postulated:
5) "a significant speed increase results from using existing CPU advances via these new distros"
Do you have any reports to back this up? Where is your 'proof' for the 'significant speed increase'. The four systems I tested did show some marginal speed increases on a PAE kernel, but it was <2% in most cases. Less than 2% is not a 'significant speed increase'. So trying to claim that there is, is dishonest at best.
Furthermore, where is your 'Proof' that PAE does not negatively impact older hardware. You've claimed that there is no performance degradation, I'd like to see 'proof' of this.
I'd be willing to venture that P3 systems and older will all suffer a performance penalty with PAE. I'll try to dig up some older hardware and test it though. I think P4 systems are new enough not to suffer, but I wont know until I test it.

You have asked for proof for people making claims that counter what you have stated. (when Alte commented about PAE not booting) I think its only fair that you provide the same.

Since I knew it was eventually going to be asked, I provided proof of my claims. In fact, My tests offer validation to your claims that PAE is a minimal impact on modern hardware. They offer offer validation that it allows a 32bit system to access 16gb of ram. But my tests also show point 4 from above, which I think should be presented as well along with your other points.

This isn't anything personal against you or anyone else, after all we are all here to try to provide the best user experience to users. I believe that starts with respecting our users enough to give them accurate information so that they can make an informed decision based on their own personal desires.
I believe that you too want the best for new (and/or older) users. So please promote all the details so that they can make up their own mind. I dont think I'm asking too much with that. If you feel that I am.... well then let me know.

This topic has been covered. It was covered before and has been shared again here. It provides benefit and you've already shared that it does in your own way. You mentioned community member @Atle, we worked with him and he worked with us in this thread. What is so wrong in your view as it pertains to him?

Is there some fear you have about the behavior of the developers? Where are you trying to go?_________________Get ACTIVE Create Circles; Do those good things which benefit people's needs!
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I thought I stated it quite nicely in my previous post. But i'll quote it again if you need.

Q5sys wrote:

You love promoting, and thats fine... all I'd ask is that you passionately promote the following:
1) PAE works great on modern hardware thats not 64bit.
2) PAE works fine on Modern Hardware, but a user would be better served by a 64bit release.
3) PAE is incompatible with certain processors
4) PAE works on 'most' older hardware, but brings with it a performance penalty. On a P3 system like the one I have and tested on, PAE offers NO added functionality, and had a massive performance penalty.

You already are promoting the first three (repeatedly), I ask that you help all users by also informing them of the fourth. (which you have refused to do)

gcmartin wrote:

This topic has been covered. It was covered before and has been shared again here. It provides benefit and you've already shared that it does in your own way.

Yes I've stated that it does provide benefit for modern hardware. I never disputed that fact. You however are refusing to address point 4. I dont know why you are choosing to ignore it. I can only guess that you are disregarding the message because you dislike the messenger.

gcmarin wrote:

You mentioned community member @Atle, we worked with him and he worked with us in this thread. What is so wrong in your view as it pertains to him?

I brought up Atle, becuase you asked him for proof of his claims and he provided it. I was simply asking you to abide by your own desires for proof, and offer proof to support your apparent refusal to acknowledge that PAE can have a negative impact on older hardware (P3 and earlier). Atle disagred with one detail of your claims, and when you asked, he supplied you with information counter to your original claim. After, you modified your original claim. That's how a community discussion with input ususally works.
However you are apparently refusing to extend the same to the information I have provided. Since you have not refuted the tests (you have in fact selected the portions that support your points), is there a reason you are unable to modify your original claim to acknowledge the full test results? Specifically regarding older hardware?

gcmarin wrote:

Is there some fear you have about the behavior of the developers? Where are you trying to go?

I dont have a clue what you are trying to ask here.

I thought we (the community) were having a rational discussion, where each presents their views and supplies supporting evidence for their views. Then everyone can read through and decide their view.
This flowchart describes nicely what I thought we were having... 'a discussion'.
I have no problem agreeing with you on things. I have agreed with every factual point you've made in this thread, except one. PAE has a negative impact on older hardware. I supplied testing reports to support this point. Are you unable to agree to this simple thing?

gcmartin,
Could you PLEASE stop going back and editing your posts after someone replies.
It's very dishonest to do so, because it completely changes the context that everyone will read in any post that follows.

You are now on some quest for your #4. This topic has been covered!!!
Others and myself have addressed this, months ago. And again here.

I asked Atle not for proof but to share what he was using in hopes to help. @Atle, if you were offended, as one can interpret from what is being shared by @Q5sys, please state so. I don't see attempts at any negative behavior in what he shared or what was done in the thread.)

@Q5sys, You seemingly are on some sort of quest for which has been covered over and over in this thread. But, you keep re-iterating and I am trying to see how to help you or support you.

But, I keep asking because you keep posting as if you want the community to do something its overlooking. The development community, as I share, does NOT appear to be abandoning any its users by providing both PAE as well as non-PAE solutions for 32bit PCs. And the community has gotten much much better is stating information in their opening posts that is extremely useful when Puppy distros are announced. In fact, this trend is seen across the Linux industry. Are you suggesting that the whole industry missing something, too?

Again, thanks for again echoing that PAE does, in fact, run on PC no matter how little or much RAM it has (assuming, of course, that it is booted on 1 of the 99% of ALL computers sold since 1995 that has PAE built-in).

There is NO passion in asking this of you. And NO, you don't seem to be addressing my question of you as I continue to ask. So, let me ask it differently. Is there some methodology that you would propose for the community developers to use to assist user selections? And, if so, can it be standardized?

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You are now on some quest for your #4. This topic has been covere!!!
Others and myself have address this it months ago. And again here. I ask Atle not for proof but to share what he was using in hopes to help. @Atle, if you were offended, as one can interpret from what is being shared by @Q5sys, please state so. I don't see attempts at any negative behavior in what he shared or what was done in the thread.)

@Q5sys, You seemingly are on some sort of quest for which has been covered over and over in this thread. But, you keep re-iterating and I am trying to see how to help you or support you.

But, I keep asking because you keep posting as if you want the community to do something its overlooking. The development community, as I share, does NOT appear to be abandoning any its users by providing both PAE as well as non-PAE solutions for 32bit PCs. And the community has gotten much much better is stating information in their opening posts that is extremely useful when Puppy distros are announced. In fact, this trend is seen across the Linux industry. Are you suggesting that the whole industry missing something, too?

Again, thanks for again echoing that PAE does, in fact, run on PC no matter how little or much RAM it has (assuming, of course, that it is booted on 1 of the 99% of ALL computers sold since 1995 that has PAE built-in).

There is NO passion in asking this of you. And NO, you don't seem to be addressing my question of you as I continue to ask. So, let me aski it differently. Is there some methodology that you would propose for the community developers to use to assist user selections? And, if so, can it be standardized?

Here to help

I have been addressing your question.
You however have failed in any post in this thread to acknowledge that PAE has a negative impact on older hardware.(P3 and earlier)
Nor have you provided any proof to counter the tests that I completed.
Instead you say 'its been covered', and do not direct me to a single place in this thread where you have addressed the results of PAE having a negative impact on older hardware.(P3 and earlier). You address the results that support a positive viewpoint of PAE on modern hardware, but ignore the results that do not support PAE on older hardware.

You continue to try to skew the issue, with statements like, "Are you suggesting that the whole industry missing something, too?" This statement is nonsensical since the current PC industry is not developing OSes for P3 and older hardware. They are not missing anything, they have moved on so they dont care about older P2 and P3 hardware. They arent addressing the issue of PAE on P3 and earlier hardware, because they dont support those cpus anymore. Furthermore if you are talking about the 'industry' , the x86 CPU market is all 64bit and non PAE 32bit CPU, at this point. PAE is useful for some, but its window of use is closing quickly for the 'industry' as 64bit OSes are finally become commonplace. This is leading some linux communities to consider dropping i686 support all together. Arch is already considering dropping it, with several of their lead devs openly supporting the move to drop it. The discussion has also been occuring within the Ubuntu Dev community as well, but I summize they will hold onto it for a bit longer. Chakra has dropped i686 support.
We should continue to support i586 and i686, since we focus on older hardware.

I have tried to have a fair discussion about this, you however refuse to address the information I present and instead make accusations against me. You pick and choose what parts of my post you will even acknowledge. And simply retort 'its been addressed', yet provide nothing more.

The fact that you have been retroactive editing your posts after I make comments so that my comments seem out of context or completely off base. This is completely dishonest and I would have hoped for better. This leads me to believe that you do not desire to have a fair and open discussion in front of the community, since you are trying to be sneaky and edit your posts and not be transparent about doing so. You failed to even comment, apologize, or even acknowledge this; which in my mind shows a complete disregard for openness in front of everyone.

gcmartin wrote:

There is NO passion in asking this of you. And NO, you don't seem to be addressing my question of you as I continue to ask. So, let me aski it differently. Is there some methodology that you would propose for the community developers to use to assist user selections? And, if so, can it be standardized?

Again you have choosen not to acknowledge that I have already addressed this point here, at the end of my post here, and at the end of my post here.

But I'll state it once again...
I do not feel that the PAE version should be the default version. PAE should be an option, and/or one that a user could download through the REPO (kernel update along with kernel drivers for vbox etc). That way the system boots for every user, and if they have 4gb or more ram... they can choose to upgrade (of sorts) to gain PAE compatibility. Several developers are currently pushing out kernel updates for the driver through a PET, this has been going on for a while now, I dont know why its not more mainstream. (Not to mention the added benefit of not having to host two ISOs)

Furthermore, ALL users should be presented with the facts about PAE and let them make an educated decision for their own. So if they have P2, they can be aware that they may incure a performance penatly if they opt for the PAE system (which will offer then no benefit, since P2 and P3 Motherboards are unable to support 4gb of ram, P3 Motherboards max out at 2gb of ram. - It doesnt matter what the CPU can do if the board cant support it!)

But since you do not agree with that mindset, I'm certain you will continue to ignore it, as you have been doing everytime I've written it.
Since you like pointing out questions that havent been answered... can you answer this one that I asked?

Q5sys wrote:

I have no problem agreeing with you on things. I have agreed with every factual point you've made in this thread, except one. PAE has a negative impact on older hardware (p3 and older). I supplied testing reports to support this point. Are you unable to agree to this simple thing?

Dont reply with a non answer like: 'its been addressed' All I'm asking is a simple Yes or No, to if you will agree to that fact.

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